


Count All The Bees In The Hive

by Elliefint



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Autism, Autistic Bruce, Based on a Tumblr Post, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, F/F, Foster Care, Gen, Kid Fic, Parent Tony Stark, Science Bros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3321836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elliefint/pseuds/Elliefint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark was nervous about adopting a little Autistic girl from foster care, but Evie Stark is the best thing that ever happened to him. (I'm not still working on this, by the way. Lost the computer hard drive with my work and outlines a while ago, and I'm not really in the Avengers fandom much anymore. You can still read it if you want, though.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which There Are So Many Books

**Author's Note:**

> This comes from this: http://elliefint.tumblr.com/post/110486209707/deafhavvkeye-elliefint-elliefint
> 
> So credit for a bunch of the ideas goes to deafhavvkeye, writer_in_a_TARDIS_blanket on here, used with permission. Thank you, friend!

Tony grinned down at the little hand wrapped around his own. "Ready to get some books?" he asked. The little girl nodded enthusiastically, flapping her free hand in excitement as the pair entered the store. The children's section was right near the entrance, and the kiddo's face lit up when they headed toward it. "Now, look around and pick out whatever you want, but stay in this section," Tony instructed. She hesitantly let go of his hand and looked up at him, but not into his eyes. “Go ahead,” Tony said. “I’m right here.”

She stepped forward and looked up at the shelves of colorful kids’ books with a thoughtful expression on her face and then stood on her tiptoes to grab a tiny pocket paperback edition of a book written for kids much older than her six years. She brought it back to Tony and handed it to him without a word.

“You want this one?” Tony asked, surprised. “Are you sure?”

“It’s the littlest one,” the little girl said. She spoke with a stutter and paused in unusual places, with little inflection in her voice. “It’s less expensive?”

Tony’s heart broke for the child. He’d heard Bruce talk about foster parents who would guilt the kids in their care about how expensive they were to care for even as they pocketed the checks child services sent, but he couldn’t believe that by six she had internalized that. He knelt down to her level. “Listen, Eva Maria, Evie… May I call you Evie?”

Young Eva Maria thought for a moment. “I like Evie. Okay,” she said.

“Evie. You are worth all the money in the world, okay?” he said. “Let’s pick out a big stack of books.” Evie still hesitated. “What do you like, kiddo? We’ll get books about those things.”

“I like… frogs?” Evie said after a moment. “And science things and princesses. And kitty cats like Ada! And adventures.”

Tony grinned. He grabbed four or five frog books from the shelf and showed them to Evie. “What do you think of these?”

“I like frogs!” she repeated, grinning and flapping her hands in front of her face. “We can get them all?”

“Yup,” Tony said. “Now why don’t you find some science books and I’ll look for princesses?”

Evie bounced over to the kids’ nonfiction shelf and started picking out Eyewitness books and Let’s Read and Find Out books and books of experiments while Tony gathered a stack of fairy tales and more modern princess stories. They got every _Magic Tree House_ title and _A Castle Full of Cats_. Evie was grinning and flapping and kept looking to Tony for reassurance that this was really okay.

Pretty soon their shopping basket was too full for Evie to lift. Tony carried it to the checkout with Evie by his side. The cashier looked at the stack of books and then at Evie. “Is it a special occasion?” he asked her. She looked away shyly.

“The most special in the world,” Tony said. And it had been a long day. A transportation aide had dropped Evie off at the tower that afternoon. It wasn’t the first time Tony had met his new daughter, as they did have meetings over the course of the adopting process, but it was the first time she had been to her new home. Tony had asked Bruce what he should do to make Evie feel more comfortable. Bruce had explained that when he was in in foster care, he never had anything of his own. Toys and clothes and books were passed down from his foster parents’ previous foster kids and had to be left behind for the next set when he was inevitably moved again. It was all very generic, plain shirts, jeans, popular kids’ books and durable toys. Bruce suggested taking Evie shopping and letting her pick out things that _she_ liked. That was what Tony had done, getting clothes before dinner, getting dinner at a cute little pizza place and then stopping at the book store.

Evie was at this point struggling to keep her eyes open. “Today’s tired you out, hasn’t it?” Tony asked. She nodded, and Tony picked her up and set her on his hip. “We’ll get toys tomorrow, then,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

She leaned her head against his chest, furrowing her brow as the lump from his ICD dug into her cheek. “What’s that?” she asked.

Tony shifted her to his other side and grabbed the bag of books with his free arm. “Battery,” he explained. “My heart is weird.”

“Okay,” she said, satisfied, and rested her head against him again. She was asleep by the time Tony walked out the door and into the warm summer night. Happy brought the car around and Tony buckled sleeping Evie into her car seat and sat down beside her. As they rode back toward the tower, he ran his fingers through her dark, shoulder-length curls and sang a lullaby he didn’t remember where he’d heard. “Christopher Robin and I walked along under branches lit up by the moon…”

When they got home, Tony was careful not to wake the little girl as he carried her up to her room and tucked her in, kissing her forehead again. “I love you, Evie,” he whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony has an ICD here because I find it hard to believe that after the end of Iron Man 3 he now has no cardiac issues and because I don't like it when they make disabled characters abled and because it might be relevant later in the story and because that interaction was cute to write. I've researched foster care and heart issues for this, but if you have more experience with me in these areas (that is to say, any) you can correct me on stuff if you want. I'm Autistic myself.


	2. In Which Tony Visits Bruce

Tony knocked on the door to Bruce’s apartment, the floor below Tony’s in the tower. The door opened and Bruce smiled. “Hey, Tony, how’s Eva Maria?”

“Evie’s good,” Tony said. “She’s asleep now; it’s been a long day for her.”

“I’ll bet,” Bruce said with a nod. “Moving foster homes is tough; I imagine it’s the same if you get adopted. And change is hard for people like Evie and me so that’s a factor.”

“Autistic, you mean,” Tony said.

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Come in. I’m having soup; do you want any?”

Tony shook his head. “I got pizza with Evie. Well, I had pizza, she had chicken tenders because apparently cheese is too slimy and squishy?” He entered the apartment and sat down across the table from his friend. “So, um, how do I know if I’m doing this right? Adoption, I mean. Fatherhood.”

“I’m not sure why you’re asking me,” Bruce said with a small, sad laugh. “I don’t have the best frame of reference for that stuff.”

“You’ve been on her end of this,” Tony said. “A foster kid, and Autistic. What would you have wanted an adoptive parent to do?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce admitted. “I just wanted a family; I felt like I couldn’t afford to be picky. Staying in the same place long enough to make friends, knowing someone cared what happened to me. Honestly? Love her, which I know you do, and make sure she knows it.”

“When I took her to buy books, she chose the smallest one she saw, because she thought it would be less expensive,” Tony said.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Bruce said. “The state doesn’t provide enough money to foster homes to adequately take care of a child – they’re supposed to cover the difference themselves – but some foster parents still try to make a profit off it. If you’re caring for a child for under two hundred dollars a month, corners are being cut. The harder you are to place, for example, being disabled or being school aged, the more likely you are to end up in those homes, because they’re not picky and they’ll take a lot of kids at once. So it can give you issues about money.”

“Were you in a place like that?” Tony asked.

“Sometimes,” Bruce admitted

Tony wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Sorry.” Bruce shrugged. “And what about the autism stuff? I know you’ve explained autism to me before, and of course I read all the science before I adopted her, but what can I do about the stuff that it makes hard for her?”

“You mean helping her with sensory issues and communication issues and all of that stuff?” Bruce asked. “Everyone’s different Tony. Find out from Evie what she needs, be patient with her, figure out how she communicates most easily. Some things I can suggest are to get her stim toys and maybe a weighted blanket and a dark, quiet place she can hide. _Don’t_ try to stop her from stimming. If she has a meltdown, get her out of the environment that triggered it and to somewhere dark and quiet. Don’t punish her for melting down; we really can’t control it, and it’s terrifying. And don’t force eye contact.”

Tony nodded. “Thanks.” He paused. “Do you have any stim toys?” he asked.

“No,” Bruce said. “Few people know I’m Autistic and I know I shouldn’t but I’d like to keep it that way. Having people know makes me nervous. I hope that Evie doesn’t grow up feeling that way about herself, but I… Anyway, I stim with pens and pencils and my glasses and by tapping my feet and biting on my lips, but I suppress and redirect all the big, obvious ones until I’m alone. I wouldn’t mind having stim toys, but they’re all chunky, plastic, brightly colored things. It would be obvious, me being an adult…”

Tony nodded. He understood his friend’s feelings, especially considering Bruce’s experiences as a child.

“Anyway, how did today go?” Bruce asked.

“It was good,” Tony said. “Evie loves the cats. She played with Ada a bunch before we left to go shopping. Charlie was more wary of her. It was adorable. And then we went and got clothes. Her favorite colors are green and pink, and I learned that she doesn’t like pizza and adores chicken tenders…” Tony went on and Bruce listened, twirling his fingers under the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry Evie's not in this chapter. (She's asleep.) I had to exposition and decided to do it with cute (I hope?) Tony and Bruce interaction. I promise next chapter you'll get some Evie with the cats.


	3. In Which CATS!

Evie tiptoed carefully out of her bedroom door and across the living room, toward Tony’s shiny, high-tech kitchen. Her flower-patterned green play dress was rumpled from sleeping in it; Tony hadn’t wanted to wake her to get pajamas on. She poked her head through the doorway into the kitchen and saw Tony there with his coffee. “What are you doing sneaking around?” he asked playfully.

“I didn’t want to wake anyone,” she stammered, stepping into the room. “When did you wake up?”

“I haven’t gone to bed yet,” Tony admitted. “Looking for breakfast?”

Evie nodded shyly. “Yes, please,” she said softly.

Tony waved her over to the table and she sat down. “What do you like?” he asked, standing up and open up a cupboard. Evie shrugged. “Frosted flakes? Pop tarts? Toaster waffles?” he suggested.

At that moment, a fluffy ball of orange entered the kitchen and Evie squealed and flapped. “Kitty’s here! Hi Ada!" She slid from her chair onto the floor next to the cat, and started playing with Ada’s soft fur. Ada laid down and purred contently.

“Jellybean, I still need to know what you want for breakfast,” Tony reminded the little girl.

“She’s so _cute!_ ” Evie squealed.

Tony sighed, an amused look on his face. “Waffles it is,” he said, pulling two Eggo waffles out of the freezer and popping them in the toaster. Ada stood up and took a few steps away from Evie and then looked back at her. She took a couple more steps and then looked back again. Tony laughed slightly. “She wants you to chase her,” he explained to his confused daughter.

“Cool!” Evie said, leaping to her feet. She dashed off after the fluffy tabby, arms flailing as she ran.

Tony smiled to himself and leaned against the kitchen counter, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He texted Bruce. “gob help me shes a morning persen”

When the waffle popped up, Evie was still running around with the more playful of Tony’s cats. The other one, a black and white shorthair, strolled into the kitchen and lay down under the table. “I hear you, Charlie,” Tony said.

He took the waffles out of the toaster and set them on a plate, adding butter and syrup and pouring Evie a glass of orange juice. It was all ready for her when she skidded back into the kitchen. “Oh, yummy!” she said, clapping her hands enthusiastically and scrambling into the seat.

She dug into the waffles while Tony sat across from her with his coffee. “What are you so excited about today?” he asked her.

“We’re getting toys today,” Evie reminded him. “Like LEGOs and Elsa!”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “You’re a fan of Frozen?”

“Do you wanna build a snowman?” Evie sang as her response. “Or ride our bikes la la la la?” Suddenly something soft brushed against Evie’s leg, and she ducked her head under the table. “Other kitty! Hi Charlie!” Evie reached out for the smaller cat and he scampered away. “He doesn’t want to play with me,” she said.

“Yeah, Charlie’s the shy, lazy one,” Tony said. “He won’t run around with you like Ada will, but he does like being talked to. I bet he’ll let you read one of your new books to him later.”

“I’m gonna read the cat a story!” Evie agreed.

“Finish your breakfast first,” Tony said.

Soon Evie had finished her waffles, but she still hadn’t touched her juice. “Do you not like orange juice?” Tony asked. “Do you want water or apple juice instead?

“It’s glass,” Evie said, tapping the side of the cup.

“Don’t worry,” Tony said. “You won’t break it and if you do that’s not a problem.”

“Glass feels wrong on my mouth,” Evie clarified. “Is there plastic cups?”

Tony didn’t think he had any plastic disposable cups at the moment, and in preparing his home for a child he hadn’t thought of getting kids’ cups. “No. JARVIS, do we have any bendy straws?” he asked.

“Second drawer down, to the left of the window,” the AI responded helpfully. Tony found a box of straws right where JARVIS said they were and handed a green one to Evie.

“Thank you,” she said, sticking the straw in her juice and beginning to drink it rapidly. “Do you have a guy who lives in your ceiling?”

Tony laughed. “JARVIS is an artificial intelligence. He’s like a robot but without a robot body. If you need help with anything, just ask him.”

“It’s the future!” Evie said, flapping excitedly as she finished off her juice. “Now it’s time to read to the cat?”

“Go pick out a book and then come into the living room,” Tony said.

The two left the kitchen and Evie ran into her playroom and came back with her choice. “It’s a cat book for the cat’s book,” she explained.

Tony sat down on the couch. “Charlie, c’mere,” he said. Charlie came out of wherever he was hiding and curled up on the couch next to Tony. Evie sat in a chair across from them and opened her book.

“Mittens sits in the grass,” Evie began. “He is all alone.” Her reading was the slow, halting kind of a child who hadn’t yet started first grade, but Tony hung on to every word. Charlie, to his credit, stayed on the couch until she finished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly dyslexic Tony is a headcanon of mine, so I asked my dyslexic brother to help me with the text he sent. For people who have difficulties reading things with spelling errors, he said "God help me, she's a morning person." Please feel free to correct me if I messed up on the cats, I'm allergic so I don't really know any.


	4. In Which Everyone Loves Spinny Chairs

It was later that morning when Bruce stepped out of the elevator and into Tony’s living room. Unlike Bruce, Tony didn’t have a clear door separating his living space from the rest of the private area of the tower, and that combined with how understandably nervous it made Bruce to have people around him unexpectedly meant that Tony’s living room was generally the place where the two would wander freely and hang out. When he entered the room, Evie, who had been busy adding green stripes to a giraffe in World of Zoo on one of Tony’s floating hologram computer screens, stopped what she was doing and shyly stepped behind Tony.

Tony smiled, amused, and looked down at her reassuringly. “Evie, this is your Uncle Bruce. He lives here, too, but downstairs.”

Bruce knelt down to her height. “Hello, Evie.”

Evie stood back and stared at him for a moment, twisting her fingers nervously. “Hello,” she whispered.

“Do you want to show Uncle Bruce what you’re making in your game?” Tony suggested.

“Giraffe,” Evie said quietly. She walked tentatively over to Bruce and took his hand, and led him over to the computer. He followed her over to where a computer screen hologram was floating above a desk. Evie had tried to use the holograms the way Tony did, but all of the little swishes and hand signals came with a bit of a learning curve to someone who didn’t invent them, and besides that she kept accidentally closing the screen when she flapped her arms and hands, so Tony had set up a keyboard and mouse for her so that she could use the computer the way she was used to.

She sat down in the big office chair and Bruce stood beside her. “Can you tell me about your giraffe?” he asked.

“Her name is Emily,” Evie said slowly. “She is a giraffe in my zoo and I made her all pretty. She has green stripes and pink spots because that’s my favorite.” Her speech was speeding up and becoming more confident as she got involved in talking about a subject that interested her, and her hands started flapping. “I have three giraffes. I also have alligators. The difference between an alligator and a crocodile is that alligators have round noses and crocodiles have pointy noses. That means you are a crocodile. I’m an alligator.” She tapped the tip of her nose with her finger. “I can’t have frogs in this game because frogs are not a zoo animal.”

“You like frogs, then?” Bruce asked.

“Frogs,” Evie agreed with an enthusiastic nod. “Frogs are amphibians because they can go on land and in water. They live everywhere in the world except for Antarctica. My favorite kind of frog is a glass frog. They are itty-bitty and can stand on your finger and their skin is see-through on their bellies. Some of them live in trees. I also like the South American horned frog. They have giant heads, and they’re green and they have stripes. They love to dig.” Her hands had been flapping as she talked and at this point her whole arms were waving up and down. “I also like the Goliath frog. They are the giantest frog and can be more than a foot long. They live in rivers and they don’t ribbit and they sometimes eat snakes and turtles. I like the atelopus frog which has pink designs on it, but it’s actually a toad. Frogs are different from toads because they have itty-bitty teeth.”

“I see,” Bruce said, when he finally had the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. “That’s very cool.” He noticed Tony rubbing his eyes and concealing a yawn. “Tony, did you sleep at all last night? Or the night before?” he asked.

“…No,” Tony admitted.

Bruce sighed and smiled knowingly. “Go sleep; I’ll look after Evie.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Alright, mom. JARVIS, wake me up in time to take her to get lunch and toys. I promised.”

“Alarm set to twelve p.m., sir,” the ceiling replied.

“I’m gonna play with you for a little while, while Daddy’s taking a nap, okay?” Bruce said.

Evie shrugged “The White’s tree frog is from Australia. They have horizontal pupils and make good pets. They like to be held and they chase after crickets. They sometimes change what shade of green they are. Foster kids aren’t allowed to have pets, though. It makes it harder to move us.” She began to spin in the chair.

“I know,” Bruce said.

Evie tilted her head to the side, her game forgotten at this point. “Why do you know?”

“I was in foster care when I was kid, too,” Bruce said.

“Oh,” Evie said. “And you wanted a pet?”

Bruce nodded. “I wanted a dog,” he said.

“You’re a grown-up now,” Evie said. “You can get a dog. Do you have one now?”

Bruce shook his head. “The top of a tower isn’t a good place to keep an animal that needs to go outside all the time. I love Tony’s cats though.”

“Did you ever get adopted?” Evie asked, dragging her feet along the floor to stop spinning.

“No,” Bruce said. “I eventually got a placement with my aunt and stayed there. I don’t think I would have ever gotten adopted if I’d stayed in the shuffle. I was almost eleven, so the chances go down at that point.” He was hesitant to share that stuff with little Evie, but he knew that she’d been in in the system since before she was three, so none if this would be unfamiliar to her. His childhood would be relatable to her, which made him kind of sad.

“Kyle said I would never get adopted because of autism and nobody wants a weird kid,” Evie said.

“Who’s Kyle?” Bruce asked.

“Foster brother,” Evie said, and counted on her fingers, “three homes ago. He’s weird too. He’s fourteen and never gotten adopted yet.”

“Well, you did get adopted, so I guess he was wrong,” Bruce said, silently wondering what became of that kid.

“Yeah,” Evie said, not quite believing it.

“And you know what?” Bruce said. “I’m Autistic too.”

Evie’s eyes widened. “Really? Do you like spinning round and round?” Bruce shrugged self-consciously. “This rolly chair is so good! Sit with me and spin with me!”

She got up and let him sit down and the climbed onto his lap. They started spinning the chair and Evie shrieked with laughter and delight, waving her arms around excitedly. Bruce held on tight to the flailing child so she wouldn’t fall and grinned.

 

When Tony woke up, he walked into his living room to see Bruce and Evie holding hands and running in tight circles. He watched for a moment and then looked away because it was making him dizzy just to watch. “What the heck are you doing?” he asked, careful not a stronger word than “heck” in the presence of a six year old.

“Evie likes spinning around,” Bruce said, a little sheepishly.

“Uncle Bruce likes spinning around too,” Evie said. “Can we bring him with us to the lunch and the store?”

“Sure, why not?” Tony said with a shrug. “Get ready to go, Jellybean.”


End file.
